What if your body doesn't need fixing?

I'm going to preface this post with three things:

1. I need to work on my taxes, which may be why the inspiration to write is so strong. 

2. I'm going to offer you what is essentially a spiritual lesson wrapped in the body, but I don't want it confused with me having figured everything out. I am neurotic and inconstant and generally like it when I can make problems disappear, even if I view them as teachers. This post is like a love letter to me, too.

3. If you resonate with this, you might really want to come explore movement with me.

So a few weeks ago, my (temporary) midwife suggested once again that I go see her chiropractor. She qualified this by saying that he's not really like a chiropractor. 

I know a LOT about my body and the way it moves and doesn't move. How it's balance and imbalanced. I also happen to adore body work, especially in the context of a movement-rich life. So I knew that someone who works with the tissues at a mechanical and energetic level could be useful to me. 

But mostly, without any specific "complaint" to work on, it just felt right to schedule an appointment (btw - every single decision I make from that place never disappoints). 

So yesterday I go see this energy-worker-hidden-in-the-profession-of-a-chiropractor and as we're getting started, he says:

"I'm not here to fix you. I don't work that way. I just want to help hook you up to life and see what happens from there."

Yes, he was the quintessential hippie. And yes, I knew I was in love.

We talked at length about my practice and his practice and how wise the body's adaptations are. We talked...

About how forcing the body into some new way of being isn't really respecting its inherent intelligence.

About how movement is an invitation.

About how learning to move IN your body IN your life IN your world isn't some sort of luxury - it's THE thing.

And how that embodied state becomes the driver for social change and political change and environmental change. 

All while he held my ankles a bit while I lied on my back, then checked in again with my pelvis and my nervous system and then had me sit up while he gently supported my femurs. 

A bit later, I stood up, and the difference in my pelvis - the way it sat on my legs, the way it felt like a solid base of support, the way my womb had an easier resting place - was palpable. 

Did he "fix" some problem I had?

No. I didn't actually come with a problem.

Did he help my nervous system reconnect to some safety and did that enable me to find a new sort of balance?

Yes.

Might that "fix" some problems, now or in the future?

You bet. 

This issue of fixing is a tricky one in my work. 

I know you're hurting. I know you can't do the things you want to do. I know you don't feel good. I know you want these problems fixed. I also know that movement education can lead to the resolution of these problems. 

Your prolapse will go away or become a non-issue. 

Your knee pain will disappear. 

Your back will stop hurting. 

Your digestion will improve. 

Your diastasis recti will heal. 

Your planta fasciitis will resolve itself. 

Your bunion will stop hurting. 

Your hips will support you getting up and down from the ground. 

You'll be able to walk farther, play longer, make love more creatively, breathe better, think more clearly, birth more easily, live the sort of life you've been wanting to live. 

But that doesn't actually mean you ever needed to be fixed. 

Could it possibly be that there's nothing wrong with you in the first place? That you - and the way your body has adapted to the inputs its been given - are just perfect? That there's no need to run away from yourself?

I teach movement and exercise because it's amazing. Endlessly fascinating. Powerful. Life-giving. Necessary. 

But what I'm increasingly seeing is that my work isn't about fixing you. It's hooking you up to life. 

Every calf stretch literally brings more life to your calf via oxygen. 

Every rhomboid pushup literally opens you up to new possibility. 

Every nasal breath literally helps reassure your nervous system that you're not in danger. 

All of it - all this movement work - hooks you up to life in really basic, biological ways. 

This is a part of what, in turn, "fixes" you. 

But it's not just that. 

This movement work meets a deep primal need that supports you in returning to life in ways that your deepest parts long for. It doesn't just meet the needs of your body, but of your heart, too, of your soul. Or maybe it's just that those needs are never really distinct, but are folded in on one another, layers of longing and love. 

I don't want to fix you. I am not asking you to fix you. 

I want you to come home to yourself, to Love, to Life. 

Movement is the path I walk to bring me there. 

It can be yours, too.